Business Strategy During the Recession: Leverage Automation to Do More With Less

Heading into Q4 of 2022, layoff announcements hit our news feeds daily. As of September 2022, more than 52,000 workers in the tech industry alone have faced job cuts, certainly itself a "business strategy during a recession". Those who remain after the layoffs face another challenge: Facilitate growth in a world where “inflation” and “recession” are buzzwords in every conversation.

Regardless of experts debating whether or not “recession” is the correct term, the state of the world right now is clear: Businesses are bracing for cost-cutting measures. According to a recent survey by PwC, approximately 50% of businesses expect to cut their workforce in the next six months to a year.  

We won’t see budget increases or clearance to hire new team members any time soon. Instead, we have to learn to do more with less. In this article, you’ll learn about business strategy during the recession and how to leverage technology to reduce costs and fuel growth.

How Businesses Are Bracing for the Recession

Weirdly enough, companies known for embracing and promoting change have mainly used traditional cost-cutting strategies in 2022 and into 2023.

Job Cuts

After a banner year for tech, layoffs are here. Job cuts have increased exponentially. Tech companies as colossal as Netflix and Meta have taken part in the trend, as well as Robinhood, Glossier, Better, Stripe, Lyft, and more. Some organizations blame the COVID-19 pandemic for drastic layoffs, while others attribute them to over hiring during periods of rapid growth.

Even eCommerce giant Amazon is engaging in belt-tightening, shutting down projects, and freezing corporate hiring.

Innovation Emerges from the Darkness

During a year that featured mass layoffs, crashing stock prices and extensive crypto scandals, ChatGPT emerged as a major step forward in AI innovation. The application, which quickly surpassed one million users, can carry multiple conversations at once, write software code and answer questions – signaling a new phase in natural language processing using AI.

In fact, according to tech industry data firm Pitchbook, early-stage investors and software developers have moved from crypto based to generative AI projects across the board. Many have even cited ChatGPT as a search disruptor, potentially putting Google’s iron grip on the search market at risk. Whatever the future holds, ChatGPT shows that even as economic conditions get tough, innovation is sometimes unstoppable, even without major investment costs.   

Shifting Business Strategy

Companies that previously thrived in the brick-and-mortar space have had to shift their focus to online operations to survive the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s not just retail-focused businesses that were directly affected; many companies have had to adjust their concentration from in-person sales and interaction to online and digital marketing.

Which Under-Adopted Cost-Savings Measure to Embrace

While the above methods are commonly implemented and can be effective, under-adopted cost-saving strategies may be the key to coming out on top amid rough economic times.

One of the most prevalent and effective solutions is automation or embracing advanced technology over the hard cost of labor.

Moving into an AI-Driven World

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman recently offered advice to business leaders about the prevalence of AI in our modern world. Hoffman said, “You are sacrificing the future if you opt-out of AI completely.”

While AI may not have a place in every department in your organization, doing your homework and knowing when to use it is critical to business strategy during a recession.

In the world of language translation, machine translation solutions combining AI with MT technology are changing the game for organizations around the globe.

Rather than paying numerous salaries of in-house translators to keep up with the demand for translation within your organization, you can invest in advanced technology to do the work for you—and at a greater volume and faster speed than even the best translation teams can produce.

SYSTRAN’s neural machine translation software is a highly sophisticated example of a cost-saving system that can accurately translate your business’s documents, communication, and other critical components.

Solving Language Translation Issues Across Multiple Departments

All too often, several teams in a single organization have the same problem—but siloed communication and geographic separation prevent them from identifying their shared headaches.

Case in point: translation needs for teams as varied as legal (such as for patents), marketing, customer support, finance, research and development, and IT.

The cost-effective solution to this problem will never be giving each team a separate translation budget, with each team choosing their preferred resources. Rather, a single robust MT engine accessible by every team universally solves the problem while providing the side perks of drastic cost reduction and increased productivity.

How SYSTRAN Helps Companies Cut Costs with Advanced Technology

Take SYSTRAN’s case study with Ariel Corporation, for example. Ariel Corporation is a quintessential American entrepreneurial company that’s the largest manufacturer of separable reciprocating gas compressors worldwide.

Ariel partnered with SYSTRAN to elevate their workflow, increase machine translation output, and minimize costs. Before they implemented SYSTRAN, 17% of Ariel’s overall translation efforts came from machine translation. Afterward, SYSTRAN was able to help the company reduce human translation efforts by a staggering 31% and improve the quality of machine translation by 100%.

By improving the MT translation process, SYSTRAN provided Ariel’s translators with an additional, trustworthy reference source to use while translating new segments. It’s hard to quantify this benefit, but it reduces machine translation post-editing time dramatically.

Use NMT from SYSTRAN as a Cost-Saving Opportunity

Constructing a solid business strategy during the recession requires using tactics that your competitors aren’t adopting. Technology provides us with resources to reduce costs and fuel growth in an economic downturn.

For many enterprises, neural machine translation software can be the pathway toward achieving more with less. Nothing illustrates this more effectively than SYSTRAN’s ROI Calculator, demonstrating how NMT creates massive cost savings for companies with international communication needs.

You can test the power of SYSTRAN’s NMT software for free today. It only takes a few seconds. Come and see what all the excitement is about.

Start your free 14-day trial of SYSTRAN Translate PRO today. To find out more about us, contact us here.